Competency Statements: Less is more, until it’s not
Competency Statements have generally been just that — Statements.
The word competence is defined as “the ability to do something successfully or efficiently, and was first used around 1596. A history of competency based education in the United States would take much longer, but it’s had a varied history and range of interests as well. Essentially though, most educators know their Standards as simply that — statements.
CASE seeks to change that. CASE was designed primarily to represent learning taxonomies for software and making connections between competency statements. While the ‘fullStatement’ field is the only thing required, other systems would need more metadata to provide context without interpretation of the entire framework. Thus there are additional metadata fields about the statement itself such as:
Abbreviated Statement: so it looks nicer on a screen
CFItemType: A Common Core example is how in Math some higher-level statements are Clusters
Language: Think about Competency Frameworks that require or would be helped by an official a translation (Quebec, certain US States etc.).
For the purpose of this short, easily digestible blog post I want to focus on CfItemType and how it is helping us at ACT better define a Competency Statement and save money in the process.
Many systems define levels of a hierarchy based on the Human Coding Scheme. So for this statement: H.A.MATH.NQ.QE.1.1, the levels could be:
H — Holistic Framework (Framework)
A- Academic Skills (Domain)
M- Mathematics (Major Branch)
NQ — Numbers and Quantity (Branch)
QE — Quantity and Estimation (Category)
1.1— the first statement in Level 1 and the statement itself
Within these levels various titles familiar to an academic audience were assigned. Generally speaking, ideas like Domain, Major Collection Branch, KSAO etc were assigned to the various levels. But this was mostly done based on system knowledge and because the system exported the Framework in a flat-file format.
CASE takes a more novel approach. Part of the Competency Framework Definitions (CFDefinition), one can use CfItemType to define levels if needed (which could easily be filtered in a client application), and uses an Association Type (IsChildOf) to better define hierarchal relationships. Another blog post will talk about AssociationGroups to talk about multiple IsChildOf Relationships. Speaking of Associations, Associations to a particular item can also be used to denote importance and/or relationships to other frameworks, which in turn of course provides even more metadata for understanding the context of a statement and how it should be interpreted.
How Does This Help?
The more information organizations can give about a competency statement, the less ambiguity there is about what it means. While we have not implemented the Rubric part of a CASE Item, particularly when assessing a statement having levels of mastery vs minimal understanding documented would help not just the institution but the learner as well. Just as double yellow lines help us know when we shouldn’t pass someone else, the more defined we make a learning statement the more clear we know what we are learning and where to go next. Thus, a better defined competency statement saves money by reducing documentation and increasing usefulness as the statement goes to different systems internally and externally.
Closing Thoughts
With OpenSALT 2.2 being released next week and IMS Global’s Learning Impact coming soon in May, it’s an exciting time for competency frameworks in the education technology interoperability world!
